Defense Department Announces Plans for a Secure Internet in Space - Gizmodo

The Department of Defense (DOD) has signed agreements with 4 companies to assistance make a space-based communications web of commercialized and subject satellites. The task hopes to usage subject and commercialized satellites to transport information crossed a unafraid connection architecture, yet delivering it to subject users.

DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit awarded contracts to Amazon Web Services, Kuiper Government Solutions, Microsoft Azure Space, and SpiderOak Mission Systems for its Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA) project, the enactment announced connected Wednesday.

The task was announced earlier successful July, with archetypal contracts awarded to Aalyria, Anduril, Atlas, and Enveil. Now, the Department of Defense is seemingly diversifying its portfolio of companies, moving extracurricular its regular web of commercialized partners. “New commercialized abstraction systems supply the integer and hardware accusation systems infrastructure to amended speed, latency, scalability, and interoperability,” DIU wrote successful a statement.

DIU was established arsenic a mode to let the subject to marque amended usage of caller commercialized technologies. For this project, DIU is besides moving with the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force’s Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicle Directorate to make the abstraction communications network.

“The HSA is fundamentally DoD’s effort to physique an net successful abstraction and volition enactment the Department’s extremity of establishing accusation vantage for nationalist security,” Jason Zander—executive vice president of Microsoft’s strategical missions and technologies team, wrote successful a blog post. “By collaborating with commercialized partners, HSA vastly expands its scope of outer and abstraction systems crossed divers orbits, crushed stations and connection paths.”

For the hybrid network, commercialized satellites volition pass with 1 different crossed Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit, Geostationary Orbit, and cislunar abstraction to determination larger volumes of information astatine a higher speed. “A afloat networked battlespace has been the imagination of commanders for decades, but is present yet wrong reach,” DIU wrote successful its statement.

HSA volition besides absorption connected cybersecurity, and warring against cyber threats by enabling idiosyncratic authentication and information extortion crossed the network. “Our extremity is to guarantee that not lone Microsoft, but besides our partners, tin adhere to the aforesaid precocious information standards, and tin conscionable and transcend the U.S. government’s information requirements portion keeping gait with the evolving cyberthreat landscape,” Zander wrote.

When it was archetypal announced successful July, the hybrid web was successful its archetypal signifier of proving networking technologies. Today, the task has moved into its 2nd signifier to nexus on-ground unreality and net services with commercialized communications outer constellations, according to DIU. “It’s clip for the net to determination off-planet,” Rogan Shimmin, DIU programme manager for HSA, said successful a statement.

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